Mimesis Online from Polish Developer Tannhauser Gate, is a role-playing game that transports you to a far future world where the unexpected and mysterious waits around every corner. An unimaginable catastrophe on a cosmic scale transformed this world, playing havoc with the natural order of things, twisting everything, even time itself, wiping out civilisation as we know it. Universes died, billions upon billions of species vanished, and a new, fragile and barely stable world was born. The beings who survived the catastrophe have tried to rebuild their world, each in their own way, and now live side-by-side but not truely in peace with each other, not truely accepting each other. Nations have emerged, almost completely isolated from each other by nigh-on impenetrable barriers. This is the twisted world of Mimesis Online.

On a regular basis we will feature a developer's diary made by the Mimesis Online development team. In this diary, Derek Handley writes about writing and how a wiped file turned into something even better.

Part 13. "Mastering the Game"

The English teacher in me wants to start with an introduction of the grammar of the above title, but I shall resist the temptation. I shall also refrain from repeating my spiel about thirteen and luck and other superstitions - I've already done it in the RPG Vault (IGN) series of Developer articles.

Beanworld...
So what's new here at Tannhauser Gate? Well, this week we had another round of interviews with potential Game Masters. The studio is going to need quite a few such people to look after the running of the game and the implementation of missions. Each server is going to have a 24 hour 'watcher', who will check that everything is running smoothly, and enter the game world as a character, if need be. Their job will also entail coming up with missions and writing the dialogue for them. That's one area where I don't do much actually - I name things, I write stuff like this, and descriptions of creatures, the history of the world, its politics and so on, and I am one of the plotters of the major story arcs, but I won't have much more than an editor-in-chief capacity when it comes to the actual missions. Well, one can't do everything, can one? Marcin Baryski is a 'missionary' (I kill me!), and my main assistant, Ziemek Poniwierski, has come up with a lot of missions. I just proofread what they write, and add things to make them fit more to the world that has been created. I'm just a big, big picture kind of guy. Maybe that comes from reading too many Larry Marder comics during my teens.

By the way, does anyone else out there remember 'Tales of the Beanworld'? I've always wondered what happened to that, and who has the rights now. I never seem to get around to doing a search to find out. If anyone does know, mail me - I'd love to see some of that again.

...Game Masters...
As I was saying, the Game Masters will be a very important part of the game, because, whatever way you want to take this, they are the ones you'll be playing 'against'. We have some GMs already working at the studio, but more are needed to coincide with game release. So the hunt was on to find them in time to train them in.
The interview process is a three stage one. Stage one was standard interviews. The second round was held last week, and it focused on their written English and their teamwork abilities - a MMORPG Game Master can't be a loose cannon, because after their shift ends, they have to hand over their server and all that's in it to the next GM. Marcin and Artur got them to work together in groups of five and come up with new items and a mission, and they also had to do some writing samples. The missions they came up with were actually a lot of fun, and I can see where something I would think up would fall short when I look at their ideas. They developed ideas that fit to computer games, at the same time being complex and having a few potential solutions. What was funny was that all the ideas they had were quite dark - not quite missions for criminals, but also not exactly on the right side of the tracks, if you catch my drift. The third round will be sometime this week, and then it'll be time to train 'em in.

...Fresh Blood
It's nice to have an influx of new people from time to time - it always seems to freshen the atmosphere, and lets everyone get a new perspective. It's sort of like the Beta Tests in a way - someone new sees the work, and points out in which scenes the Emperor has got no clothes on. Just as an example:

(This is taken from the description of the Corvax, a winged creature that the Voidseers claim to recognize; the creatures are not particularly dangerous for traveller's, as they don't feed on large creatures...)
There are two species. M. alba (the Mountain Corvax) has smaller wings and inhabits highlands and mountainous regions. It spends a lot of its time in the air, riding updrafts and air currents, staying aloft for long periods. M.sylvestris (the Forest Corvax) is found in forested hilly areas. It often perches in trees, where it can be difficult to spot due to its colouring.

Do you see the error in there? The answer is at the bottom of this article, for those of you who would prefer to guess for themselves.

Anyway, we'd grown so used to it that no-one could see the error - until one of the GMs noticed it.
As I say, fresh faces (or as Artur would say, fresh blood ;) ) are a good, refreshing thing. The only problem will be when it comes time to move. Again. I'm getting the feeling that space is becoming a little thin on the ground. Still, if we do end up moving all or part of the studio to a new location, I'm sure it'll be a chance to discover some long-forgotten artwork behind a filing cabinet or some such. Not quite an artefact, but fun all the same.
Actually, there is a thing that can be a little sad when a studio expands, when teams grow and so on. As Artur himself said in interview, the more people you have to supervise, the less hands on work you yourself can do. Artur is an architect and a graphic artist, but lately he's lucky if he gets the time to do anything connected with the visual side of the game - he has so much administration work to do. Marcin is in a similar boat, almost - he still creates items, and he has a lot to do with the missions, but with a lot of things he has to delegate. Still, that's all part of founding a studio, and it's a sign that things are going well.

Okay, I'll love ye and leave ye, as my Grandmother used to say. Take care, and I'll 'see' you next time.
Derek Handley

And the error is: well, in science-fiction/fantasy terms it might not be strictly considered an error --anything's possible, right? But it does seem kind of silly to say that a creature that spends most of its life in the air would have smaller wings than a creature that has to be able to make like an Ewok on a speeder bike through between the trees of a dense forest...
They'll take away my biology licence over this game, I just know they will.